"Self-warmth makes everything better: our health, our immune system, our life
decisions, our sense of meaning, our capacity for engagement, our effectiveness,
and our intimate connections with others. But we may have agreements with
ourselves, agreements we don't even know about, to NOT be warm with ourselves.
We may have contracts to not like ourselves, to be indifferent, even to hate and
be cruel to ourselves. (And others.) Without knowing it, we make these
self-agreements in order to leverage our nervous systems to take care of the
people around us...The long-term results for our bodies, minds and nervous
systems can be tragic, even though we originally wanted to do the best thing for
everyone. These contracts are often made before we can talk. The only thing a
baby has to contribute to balancing a family is that baby's own nervous
system."
Nonviolent Communication trainer Sarah Peyton shares more about the contracts
that block joy -- and how we can dissolve them.
